Playtest has joined the website meetup.com. This should make it easier to organise meetups and encourage the Playtest members to communicate with each other and discuss new ideas. I'm hoping that we can use the site to schedule playtests more clearly.

The group went public about 24 hours ago, which means that Meetup start to list it in searches for keywords and we have already got a lot of new members.

Monday, 19 March 2012

March's Playtest meetup took us from the Tundra, where we were fighting aliens, to Europe as Venetian merchants and then to a fantasy realm to battle it out for supremacy.

Three very different and new prototypes were played, enjoyed and reviewed. The first was a semi-cooperative board game with a traitor mechanic. The paranoia spread around the table as the humans finally managed to survive. The second prototype was a competitive city-building fantasy card game adapted from a board game. The next game had a variable board and some very interesting trading gameplay, as well as great wooden pieces.

Many thanks to Brian, Brett, Chris, Lawrence, Matt and Rob for the playtest feedback. Perhaps revised versions will be available to playtest at April's Playtest meetup.

Friday, 16 March 2012

This is a quick post to congratulate two members of the Playtest London group: Brett Gilbert and Matt Dunstan, for getting on to the shortlist for the Europa Ludi 2012 Prize. (www.europaludi.com)

The competition is for as-yet unpublished games designs and is open to games designers worldwide. This year the prize is a partnering of two very well-regarded contests from Granollers, Spain and Boulogne-Billanncourt, France.

Matt's game is called 'Wandering Monk' and Brett's is called 'Gnomes of Hawthorn Hall'. Both games were playtested at the club and proved very popular with their playtesters. We wish them both good luck for the next round.

Welcome to Playtest UK!

A friendly group of board/card game designers and playtesters.The gamers get to try new game prototypes and maybe get a playtesting credit.The designers gain valuable feedback to help them develop their games further.